1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to animal traps, and particularly to rodent traps, which may be manufactured inexpensively enough to permit single use entrapment of mice and rats, the trap and contained animal being disposable, or, alternatively, may be simply reused after disposal of the trapped animal.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Rodent traps can be generally divided into two broad classifications: those that kill and mutilate the animal, such as the familiar spring-loaded snap trap, and those that trap the animal live in an enclosure. The live traps, by design, can be either disposable and/or reusable.
The mutilating traps have the advantage of being inexpensive, and therefore disposable, but have numerous disadvantages, such as being unsanitary and unsightly after the animal has been trapped, dangerous to pets and children, difficult to set, not completely reliable in preventing bait theft by a wily rodent, and aesthetically revolting to dispose of.
The live traps, while eliminating all of these disadvantages, have been plagued by a heretofore common problem that has discouraged wide commercial acceptance--they are expensive relative to the snap type traps, typically costing several times as much. This can be attributed to an excessive number of component parts with expensive mold and assembly costs, and, especially, an enclosure body typically requiring injection molding of at least two parts which must then be assembled.
The fewest number of component parts in a nonmutilating disposable trap appears to be five, set forth in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,144,667, to Souza, which appears to require injection molding of the two-part enlosure. U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,472 to Muelling, is another similar example of a claim at simplicity of manufacture, although no claim is made for disposability. This enclosure also appears to require injection molding. The U.S. Pat. No. 4,379,374 to Lindley, uses the weight of the rodent to trigger movment of the enclosure body, which is a principle that is utilized in the present trap, but in an entirely different manner. Lindley appears to have many component parts.